On Zille and the Familiar Distortions of Black History

“The fundamentals of racial segregation in the late 19th century and early 20th century South Africa were undoubtedly laid down by Victorian politicians and their Cambridge and Oxford trained bureaucrats. But it was the colonial judges who cemented and institutionalised racism, in the areas of criminal law, labour, land and the very constitution of the Union of South Africa. Henry de Villiers, the Chief Justice of the Cape had a political career before going to the Bench, having been a Parliamentarian and the Attorney General in the Cape. He presided over the 1908 Convention which decided on the creation of the Union of South Africa where, Africans, despite their protest ,were excluded from all government of this country. His reward was to become the first Chief Justice of the Union of South Africa in 1911.”

On Zille’s colonialism tweet and praise of an independent judiciary wrongly ascribed to colonialism: article by David Everatt, Head of Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand: